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Loyalty Oath
Background * Candidates in PA need to sign a loyalty oath, as of August, 2006 Media Meet the real subversives http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/vassilaros/s_464833.html :by Dimitri Vassilaros of the TRIBUNE-REVIEW on August 7, 2006 By challenging the Pennsylvania loyalty oath -- all political candidates in the commonwealth having to swear they are not subversives -- the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has more respect for the rule of law than does the General Assembly. The Pennsylvania Loyalty Act was passed in 1951 during a time when there was a very real fear of communists subverting the government. However, in Communist Party of Indiana v. Whitcomb (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the oath violated the First and Fourteenth amendments. And when the highest court in the land made its decision, the commonwealth immediately did nothing. Candidates still were required to swear they were not subversives. The irony-challenged Legislature presumably was oblivious to the idea that a subversive by definition might not be likely to keep his word about not being subversive. Enter Corbett The Pennsylvania Socialist Workers campaign gave notice in July that it intended to challenge the oath. State Attorney General Tom Corbett rightly ordered the Department of State to discontinue using the loyalty oath. Mr. Corbett, a Republican of Shaler, and the SWP, based in Philadelphia, prove that principle, as well as politics, make for strange bedfellows. But why was the loyalty oath still used until now? "The Department of State cannot speak for other administrations," said spokeswoman Leslie Amoros. And it also apparently cannot speak for the Rendell administration, at least for the first three years when nothing was done. The department finally sought an informal opinion by Corbett's office when a candidate in Pittsburgh raised the issue. The answer seems to be as simple as a story published in February in the University Times, a faculty and staff newspaper at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Gerald Massey refused to take the oath in 2005 when he ran for council in a small Mercer County town. County officials decided the loyalty oath could not be enforced. Mr. Massey won the seat. It was in 1975, according to the Pitt newspaper, that "then-state Attorney General Robert P. Kane formally declared the so-called Pennsylvania Loyalty Act unconstitutional and directed that it not be enforced." Still on the books The state Legislature never formally removed the act from state law, according to a state elections official quoted in the University Times story. The law remains on the books; it would require an act of the General Assembly to amend it. Could anyone other than the bipartisan bottom feeders who control the three branches of state government make the Socialist Workers Party look this principled? And speaking of meaningless oaths, how many legislators, governors and state court justices actually obey, respect and defend the state Constitution? Or for that matter, how many ever bother to read it? The U.S. Supreme Court and the then-attorney general were very clear. And yet the Republican and Democrat parties -- the duopoly that has had a stranglehold on Pennsylvania state government for generations -- simply cannot be bothered with the rule of law. Pennsylvanians should demand loyalty oaths from the subversives controlling state government. For all the good it would do. Links * Party loyalty category:democracy